Too Cheap To Meter

does it make sense to have an industry where more of the expense is absorbed by billing systems/infrastructure than by the actual offering of the service?

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/09/everything_too.php

most places in the US don't pay for water, or if they do it's a fixed price (for residences)

lots of multi-family residences don't have individual-unit metering of Natural Gas

lots of systems use fixed subscription pricing

• Cable Tv

• Broad Band/ISP

• local phone service (some places) - does this issue apply to all TelCo services?

How does this relate to Micro-Payments?